healthy community

for the first time in awhile i actually have the desire to be in deep, intimate relationships again. beautiful! ever since i saw some of my college friends over christmas break (and perhaps ever since i graduated in may) i have been in a mood that makes me want to lock myself in my room and hope that somehow time would reverse and all would be the same as it was in college. in the back of my mind i was like ... perhaps i should hang out with people because it can't be good to live without people ... but i couldn't really convince myself why i would want to hang out with people and have them try to fill the void of my old community. i listened to this sermon on healthy community and God used it to change my thinking a bit ... not that it won't be hard to continue transitioning out of college and into this next phase of life, but it was encouraging and convicting all at the same time. ... i love it when that happens.

if you want to listen to it it's called "healthy community" at http://www.cdomaha.com/resources_list.php?catid=mostrecent. (oh and under the category "The God Who Is" the one about Free Will is one of my favorites).

the sermon points out two unhealthy places we can be in with community ... 1. we are not responsible at all for our own sins because the community around us is responsible 2. we are not to help bear the burdens of others at all. unfortunately i am familiar with both places.

it's not just nice to live together in community, it's part of the gospel to live in community. the gospel shapes a community where we are all individually responsible for our own sin, but we are also to be interacting at a level where we know what is really going on in the lives of others and we are in a journey with to gently walk through sin with each other. we are all in the same boat and it's sinking fast. it's sad but true that we fall into comparision instead of realizing that we all have sin but it just manifests itself differently in different people. the sermon mentioned how comparision kills community ... instead of remembering how we need to remember that we are all in deep need of Jesus and all that i have and am is a gift from God. comparing myself to Jesus is good ... and to others is bad. :)

i think it makes me excited to step out of the closet and into community (even if it looks different and isn't with the same people as it has been in the past) because that's the way it's intended by God to be. that's how He transforms us ... into healthy community. healthy community is what the gospel creates!

check out the life of Jesus too!! ... Jesus bore my burden on the cross and He bore His own load by living in full obedience to God!

hopefully people hear the gospel proclaimed AND see it played out in community.

i think life is so much more about Him transforming our hearts to be who we are intended to be instead of us trying really hard to become what we were intended to be. oh the beauty of the gospel! All glory to God